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| The Starting Line: Iona Oath - by Dangerlinto
I once had a discussion with an R&D member about the course of classic's development, and we got around to talking about this card and that card and their effect on the meta. We discussed mainly and which cards will have the biggest impact on classic. The conversation mostly ended when he said: “Exodus has one of the cards I hate as a developer... It just shuts out a huge portion of the metagame” Of course, he was talking about Oath of Druids. While Exodus is a fantastically powerful set with combo pieces like Survival of the Fittest and Recurring Nightmare and awesomely aggressive cards like Hatred and Price of Progress, it is this one enchantment that really grabs everyones attention. The ability to cheat huge fatties into play is always good, but traditionally in competitive eternal magic, you had to do so in one of two ways – you could reanimate them or you could Tinker them into play. While Oath of Druids was always available to abuse, it does have a clause that would otherwise be very difficult to control: “chooses target player who controls more creatures than he or she does and is his or her opponent” – enter Forbidden Orchard. This single land, which has the “drawback” of providing your opponent with a spirit token, was responsible for the “revival” of Oath decks in 2004. Suddenly, now you can guarantee your opponent will have a creature, even if they don't have any in their deck or choose not to play any. Team Meandeck, one of the more famous vintage teams put this deck together. They did so because at the time, the Vintage meta all had some form of creatures turning sideways during the attack phase. Sound like any meta we know? Meandeck Oath 2004 – Stephen Menendian (Vintage only)
As you can see, this deck essentially used the 2 biggest creatures it could find at the time that also had haste & evasion. Haste is an important feature to the deck, because it put the opponent on a quick clock. No matter what order those two creatures come into play, they will deal lethal damage in two turn. This is even better than the clock that Darksteel Colossus via Tinker provide, as it takes two turns to ramp up. Evasion is the other quality they were looking for, and as it's very hard to find a quick flyer who can deal with those two creatures, and of course the tokens you gave them do NOT have flying, those two choices performed very well for it's time. More recently, Hellkite Overlord is the hasty, flying, trampling creature of choice. This Oath deck was a sort of standard for a time, and it contains many of the pieces found in other styles of Oath decks. For example, the Gaea's Blesssing that will eventually shuffle your graveyard back into your library, the Brainstorm that will save your butt if you open up with (or draw into) one of your creatures that need to be in your library, and the counterspells necessary to protect either your Oath, your creatures or both. Getting back to the comments about Oath's effect on the meta – most inexperienced people think of Oath as a two-card combo. You need Oath and you need Forbidden Orchard. But truly this is not the case. What you really need is Oath and your opponent to have a creature. What this means is that in a meta full of creatures, Oath is actually much more like a one card combo. As an OIath player, if I see you lead with Taiga --> Kird Ape, next game (or this game if I know what I'm up against) I'm not even going to bother with Forbidden Orchard. What that tends to do is remove mid-range beatings from the scene, because there isn't a lot of hope that you can race a player who'll beat your face in by turn 4 while as the same time countering anything that might threaten their game. If you want to race Oath, you have to do it with something a little more oomph than the play-it-safe decks, so often found in Legacy where Oath and other more powerful options are not available What's more, Oath is not simply limited to just popping out a couple of super fast fatties. Because Oath can essentially get any powerful creature from your library, it can become the basis for any strategy that revolves around that creature. Have a look at Rich Shay's Tyrant Oath deck. Tyrant Oath 2008 – Rich Shay (Vintage only)
This deck revolves around resolving Oath and then Tidespout Tyrant. While Tidespout Tyrant is a pretty fragile creature and unable to attack immediately, it does have the ability to put the game out of hand fairly fast, since every spell you play from then on it is a boomerang. This kind of deck really hampered Stax decks that sought via permanents to control the board. Tidespout disallowed that strategy, as a well as most Fish based strategies. You could also, in a pinch, switch to bouncing your own permanents – particularly moxes, which you could play infinitely and gain infinite mana with by simply having two. (Play a mox, tap it for mana, bounce the other mox, play it, repeat). This would allow you to play with one of the formats defining kill spells – tendrils of agony. Of note in this deck is how there is no Gaea's Blessing. But there is Krosan Reclamation, Yawgmoth's Will and Flash of Insight – which makes having a full graveyard worth the small chance of both your creatures being at the bottom of your library and potentially losing. While this deck is certainly more versatile than the previous Meandeck Oath, it's also definitely more fragile. A Tormod's Crypt activation or other graveyard hate (though not so much as you might think – Leyline and others can be bounced) can really stick in it's craw. For a time, however, Oath fell out of favour in vintage. A couple of things conspired to make this happen. First and foremost, the DCI restricted brainstorm. I guarantee you that prior to that, there was not a single Oath decklist you could find that would not run four Brainstorms. Being able to put a top deck creature back into the library for a single mana was too important to the deck. People drifted over to other decks. And then shortly after, Time Vault was errated and made people float even more away from Oath. However, all that seems to have changed with the release of Iona, Sheild of Emeria. Iona is a serious kick in the teeth to pretty much any deck, though some more than others. Unlike past incarnations of Oath that either went for the throat with big evasion creatures or the more-combo oriented route, Iona is a beating all on her own. First of all, though she doesn't have haste, she still has 7 power and flying, which is not too shabby. More importantly however, is that she has the ability to protect herself by naming whatever colour your opponent's removal is in, or if you have a hand full of counters to stop any removal anyway, you can just name Blue and nearly ensure all your spells will resolve while Iona is in play. Robert Vroman has used this list to incorporate elements of the more comboish tyrant oath using Iona in place of Tyrant and adjust the decklist accordingly Iona Reclamation – by Robert Vroman (Vintage only)
As you can see, he's added the Time Vault/Voltaic Key combo to a reclamation based Oath, which means he'll get Iona in play (naming blue almost all the time), reclaim the appropriate cards (Yawgmoth's Will), play the combo, play Timetwister, and then proceed to take infinite turns. I hope that evidenced by these lists, you can see not only a graduation of Oath decklists over time, but also a startling amount of manoeuvrability of Oath decks to reconfigure themselves to certain strategies or other metas. In other cases, Oath decks have incorporated cards like Chalice of the Void and a mana denial strategy, as well as even being placed in a transformational sideboard of Worldgorger Dragon deck to win game 2 (and maybe 3). Now, all the lists I've shown you have been Vintage lists – there are no legacy lists since Oath is banned in Legacy – which of course have a plethora of cards that we don't have access to (Artifact mana, Time Vault, Time Walk, Timetwister etc…), and other we won't have access to until later (Yawgmoth's Will, Accumulated Knoweldge…). The absence of many of these cards, particularly Yawgmoth's Will, precludes us from properly playing Reclamation-style decks, as there simply isn't a lot of top-notch ways to work without Will. So to take a crack at an Oath decklist for this meta, I would look to probably using Iona as a means to shut out the opponent with hefty amount of counterspells to back them up. Classic Iona Oath - by Dangerlinto
Beyond the very obvious card choices, here is what I've gone with Enlightened Tutor - A couple of these 1st turn essentially help get a turn 2 Oath of Druids. The only reason I can't recommend running a full set is that there really isn't anything else for them to get in the main deck. They are a huge help in finding the 8 artifacts in your sideboard. As usual, they are great against discard. Vampiric Tutor, Imperial Seal, Demonic Tutor - With Enlightened Tutor, this gives us effectively 11 Oath of Druids and 7 Forbidden Orchards. Balance – it's rare that this spell can backfire on you. You have no real source of natural card advantage, and the deck says this spell will mean my one creature vs your one creature, or if Oath has not been activated, it will wipe the board clean. It's worth having. Research // Development – honestly, lots of times this card is just going to be a dead card in your hand. However, other times, it's a game winner. Suffering an aggro hoard? Research up Empyrial Archangel. Need an extra 7 points of damage – get Overlord. Lost your Iona to Path to Exile? Bring in Progenitus. Need to lock out the opponent entirely? Bring in Painter's Servant (with Iona, it's spells over for your opponent). Stifle – This is the all star of the deck. More than half of what your opponent will try will be to get cards into play that can deal with Iona, since once Iona is in play you'll probably just cut them off. Stifle stops a lot of those cards. It can be used to kill an Aether Spellbomb activation (one of the guaranteed ways to deal with a bare Iona), it takes away the ability of Quasali Pridemage, Seal of Promordium and a half dozen or so other permanents that will sac themselves to rid you of your Oath before it goes off. Between Stifle and your countermagic, there is only one card that can always hose you – Krosan Grip. Thankfully, Oath costs less. If your opponent can possibly bring out Grip, your best bet is to use your Stifle to cut off their mana supply, along with your Wastelands. Mana Drain – There isn't any particular reason we're running Mana Drain other than it's just better than Counterspell. Spell Pierce – Honestly, this spot could just as easily be Spell Snare. Depending on the meta, it possibly should be Spell Snare. The two are pretty much interchangeable based on the likely decks that arise. My bet is that Spell Pierce wins out in the long run, since if your opponent is laying down creatures, you are usually in good shape unless they are True Believer. (Which admittedly also costs 2) Null Rod - Why Null Rod? Well, it might just occur to deck builders that, out of the gate, Iona has a real problem with artifacts. Damn colourless little things. It's definitely worth the loss of being able to use Lotus Petal if it means it will turn off Aether Vial, Sensei's Divining Top, Grindstone, Helm of Awakening, and more importantly, the whole lot altogether. If you are looking to really pinpoint, there are 2 Needles in the board as well. Hellkite Overlord – So if Iona is so great, why bother playing Hellkites? Well I think the answer is fairly obvious. Sometimes you'll just come across a deck that has enough removal in a bunch of different colors that Iona can't get the job done. You could bring in Painter's Servant, but if they have enough hate, you can surprise switch to two extra Hellkites and just beat with them for the win. Quite honestly, depending on how the meta shakes out, these guys might leave the decklist altogether. I really included them as a 3rd backup plan behind Iona and Empyrial Archangel. Lotus Petal – If you are a Vintage nut, you might look at Lotus Petal and shake your head. Thankfully this isn't Vintage, and Smokestack, and for that matter, Mishra's Workshop aren't around yet. Hitting Orchard, Petal, Oath go is much better than Orchard, Chrome Mox, pitch a card, go. It's flat out better, especially if that card you pitched is going to end up being the 2nd or 3rd counterspell you needed to keep Iona on the board, or stop combo from winning. Wasteland - Mana denial is a very effective control weapon for this deck. No, it's not going to try and recur lands via crucible or Loam (though the later is a thought for another Oath configuration), but considering that Iona can cut off one whole colour, if Wasteland can cut off another colour, then all the better. Hopefully the rest of the card choices are obvious enough that they don't require any explanation. Playing this style of deck, your game is obvious – you want to resolve Oath ASAP – but not without protection. Oath is one of those decks that require you to play by the “Who's the beatdown” rule that Mike Flores so long ago wrote about. As both a heavy combo/control deck, you can switch between each one as needed or as the cards dictate. Generally you can afford to mull a bit until you see Oath, unless you know you are playing against combo decks that have no creatures. If that's the case, you need to look harder for Forbidden Orchard – remember, there are 11 ways that find Oath but only 7 that find Orchard, and your deck is useless without them. Or you can just play they're the beatdown and try and play the control game – with 15 counters and mana denial you're well suited to move in that direction. Against practically any other deck, Forbidden Orchard is nice to ensure a quick Oath activation, but it's not nearly as necessary. They know you have Orchard in your deck – they can't afford to not try and deal with immediately by laying down an aggro rush. You are practically always the beatdown against non-combo. Remember that Research is your friend. Lets say your combo opponent has decided to be clever and managed to slip an Engineered Plague deck into play (thus ensuring they never get a spirit token). Don't be afraid to Research up Echoing Truth (and maybe a couple of other anti combo cards) and then tutor for it (or try and Brainstorm it up). You have a lot of countermagic that can keep them off-balance, making the game not an impossible win. If you lose your Iona, Research also puts you back in the game by putting more fatties into your library. Later, when Exodus comes online, we'll get more into specific matchups. I hope you've got yourself a good basis with which to understand Oath, and exactly how powerful and meta-warping the deck can be. |
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